The advertisement featured the tagline “In an Absolut World” superimposed upon a map of North America from the 1830s, prior to the Mexican-American War of 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which concluded the war, forced Mexico to relinquish the territory of present-day Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Utah.

Absolut said that the ad, which ran in the Mexican magazine Quién, was meant solely for Mexican audiences and depicted “a time which the population of Mexico might feel was more ideal.”

Blogger Michelle Malkin discerned a darker motive behind the advertisement, namely the belittling of American sovereignty. She concluded that the design company behind the ad, Teran/TBWA, “advocates overturning borders that get in the way of imagining new maps of North America that help Mexico create a larger share of the continent."

The alcohol company left a statement about the campaign on its U.S. customer phone line: “In no way was it meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders.”

Truthdig puts the ad into cultural perspective: “Some have called the ad offensive, but can it really be that offensive that Mexicans would imagine a perfect world as one in which they hadn’t lost half of their country?”

The “In an Absolut World” tagline has been used by the vodka maker in other campaigns as a symbol of “a world where everything is as fantastic as Absolut.” A television spot that was part of this ad drive featuring police quelling a riot with pillows is featured on YouTube.

Last year Absolut launched a U.S.-targeted ad campaign also under the banner “In an Absolut World” that depicted “a world where everything is as fantastic as Absolut,” including pregnant men with their happy wives, police officers stopping riots with pillow fights and Times Square as a high-end art gallery.

Absolut tends to target niche markets in its advertising. For example, it features gay icons in magazines for that market. The “In an Absolut World” campaign that offended Malkin ran in Quién, a Mexican magazine. James Joyner writes in Outside the Beltway that Absolut is “figuring that straights aren’t reading gay magazines and that gringos aren’t reading Quién. That’s generally a pretty safe assumption. In the Internet age, though, it’s increasingly difficult to keep targeted messages from spreading beyond their intended audience.”

Truthdig puts the ad into cultural perspective: “Some have called the ad offensive, but can it really be that offensive that Mexicans would imagine a perfect world as one in which they hadn’t lost half of their country?”

Favio Ucedo, creative director of U.S.-based Latino ad agency Grupo Gallegos, said, “Mexicans talk about how the Americans stole their land, so this is their way of reclaiming it. It’s very relevant and the Mexicans will love the idea.” He added, “Probably Americans in Texas and California understand perfectly and I don’t know how they’d take it.”

On March 31, French bottling company Pernod Ricard bought Vin & Sprit, maker of Absolut, from the Swedish government for €5.6 billion ($8.9 billion). Ratings agency Fitch lowered Pernod’s credit rating to “junk” status following the deal. The French bottler, producer of 19 of the 100 top-selling alcohol brands including Chivas Regal whisky, Mumm and Perrier-Jouet champagne and Martell cognac, asserts that it can handle the debt.